This course provides an introduction to questions of morality and politics: what it is for a private person or an officeholder to act ethically in a political society, the degree to which an individual person ought to be free from political interference to follow his or her own moral understanding, what collective decisions ought to be made, and who ought to make them. Through analyses of some of the central ethical questions in politics (obedience, freedom, the use of bad means for good ends) and some of the central modern views about right and wrong in politics (liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and democracy) it will offer an introductions to key concepts in social science and in ethics.

1. January 4: Introduction

Part I. Ethics and Politics

2. January 7:Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government” [appearing under the modern title “Civil Disobedience”]

3. January 9:Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in Gerth and Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Oxford University Press, 1958 [1919] pp. 77-128

14. February 14-16.Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, in Gourevitch,ed., The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, Cambridge University Press, pp. 49-54, 59-64, 121-2 (I.6-8, II.3-4, IV.1)Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns,” in Biancamaria Fontana, ed., Constant: Political Writings, Cambridge University Press, pp. 309-28

15. February 19.Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty, Oxford University Press, pp. 119-54